… Suppose you and a friend witness a terrible accident: a vehicle loses control, crashes into a tree, and begins to burn with the driver trapped inside. Let’s assume that it’s possible to save the driver, that going to his aid would be courageous, not reckless or foolhardy. Your friend, who is courageous, immediately springs into action. Before other bystanders have fully registered what has happened, he has rushed to the vehicle, found a means of breaking the window, and is in the process of dragging the unconscious driver to safety. If you are not particularly courageous yourself, it’s unlikely that you will react as your friend does. For one thing, you probably won’t react as quickly or decisively, even if you do want to help. You might, for instance, have a hard time deciding what to do and an even harder time doing it. In other words, you will have to wrestle with your fear of being burned or otherwise injured— even if you end up doing the courageous thing…

… Peter, seeing that the walks are icy and worried that his elderly neighbor might slip and fall, salts his neighbor’s walk as well as his own. Paul, seeing how much cleaning up there is to do after a friend’s party, stays behind to help wash the dishes…

… When we wake up to find our sidewalk coated in ice, our first thought is likely of the inconvenience this poses to ourselves— to our own risk of injury and our own well-being. It’s not that we consciously disregard the well-being of our neighbor but, rather, that we don’t habitually think of our neighbor’s well-being much at all…

… If I desire social approval and I know that society expects a certain kind of behavior, then I will have reason to do it— when someone is watching. Only when I see the relevant actions as desirable for their own sake will I have a reliable reason to do them no matter what…

… If I have to know what is virtuous in order to do it, isn’t virtue circular?…

Aristotele risolveva con il concetto di “phronimos”…

… Even if we are not ourselves virtuous, we can still recognize people who seem to have “gotten it right,” and we can imitate them. As we make progress in modeling ourselves after these exemplars, we grow in virtue…